


A Study in Lassitude

by untilourapathy (gwendolen_lotte)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Partners, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 21:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14601903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolen_lotte/pseuds/untilourapathy
Summary: But Malfoy’s the lemon-bright he’s always dreamed of being, and that cuts hard; Malfoy is rangy - feral - and has the posture of a knife, broken. Ron is just tired.





	A Study in Lassitude

**Author's Note:**

> To fill these prompts: we shouldn’t be doing this, stakeout, enthusiastic consent, found family, hair pulling, choc pudding, film night

1999\. After the war. After heartbreak.

Malfoy is war-thin and war-torn. Ron is better, but only just. 

When he gets out of bed every morning, smoothing the hair over Harry’s forehead and placing a cup of coffee by Hermione’s side, Ron looks in the mirror and sees Weasley, diluted. He’s George’s broken smile and Percy’s long-suffering sigh, he’s Bill’s fears and Ginny’s bravado. He’s all and nothing, and a solider at heart - a solider with an inner war to fight. 

A lose-lose, if you will. 

‘Loser,’ he taunts, watching his glassy self flinch, before stomping his way out Grimmauld, out into the damp joys of Islington. As he does everyday, he meets Malfoy by the postbox at the end of the street - Malfoy lounging against the Queen’s red, as he does, before offering him a smoke. As always, he crushes it beneath a heeled boot when Ron shakes his head.

‘You don’t have to, you know,’ Ron had once scowled, ‘just to keep up the rebellious aristo look.’

‘Fuck off,’ Malfoy had said, and that was that. But if Ron pays attention - which he does sometimes choose to do - he thinks Malfoy never really lights until he sees Ron leave the house, and even then doesn’t take a drag.

Because they work together now, and staying civil is something they’ve both taken upon themselves to do. Better for solve rates and all. Ron’d like to say things are exciting down at the Aurors - lime-bright, like he’d imagined in childhood, full of whizzy purple and green curses - but their daily routine involves walking past new-builds and a Currys and dingy houses that are a bit too grey to be the brown that they should be. There’s a regular stray around Finsbury that they like to stop to pet and scratch, all gums and tufty ears, but aside from the dog that they’ve named Minnie, their days are duller than if they had gone corporate. 

Harry had once asked why he still did it. Auroring, that is. Grim, petty cases that more often than not left them tramping through sewage and graveyards and closed-up Lidls, questioning the lad at the cornershop for naught and going to Fiction at The Cross, supposedly undercover, but really because they were fucking bored. 

Harry also asks, quite regularly, why Ron still puts up with their farce of a routine. Malfoy-and-Weasley, success rate at sixty something percent, domesticity rate at a hundred, give or take. 

Ron just shrugs. ‘Keeps the peace,’ he answers every time, usually with soggy naan half in his mouth as he plans the next day’s cases with a Bic Dad had given him once he hadn’t had the heart to throw away. 

Because he knows Malfoy didn’t have to take that leap in the first month of their partnership, offering to go out his way to pick Ron up one day ‘because he was in the area’. Ron had appreciated the gesture at the time, too damn tired to fight, and here they are, two years on. Ron knows he himself didn’t have to suggest that they walk together, meditatively, to work everyday - a hefty walk that Malfoy calls his constitutional, but Ron supposes even in this day and age he still feels the urge to one-up Malfoy. Ron also he knows that Malfoy doesn’t have to go fetch them both tea once they reach their office - supremely boring - and bring a new exotic flavour of teabag every week. 

‘Tea roulette,’ Malfoy always says with a wink. ‘Most exciting thing round here, anyway.’

_That_ is always said a bit glumly - because it’s true. They shouldn’t be doing this, but they stick around because they’ve no real other options. Can’t get another job without a reference, and Savage, as his name suggests, would never refer a ‘deserter’. Aurors for life - or until you’re nearly out of it, anyway. Ron, contemplative as he is the mornings, nudges a spot of blossoming mould with the tips of his chalky boots. They really should clean the office, and when Malfoy sticks his head round their newly-fixed door and shoves him the nicest teacup he’ll ever let himself hold, Ron suggests it.

They’re not one for chat. Gone are the days of hair pulling; companionable silence is where it’s at, and not starting anything that could lead to an argument has done wonders at diffusing the tension in the room. 

But Malfoy’s the lemon-bright he’s always dreamed of being, and that cuts hard; Malfoy is rangy - feral - and has the posture of a knife, broken. Ron is just tired.

*

They’re on stakeout, which is code for sitting, just outside. 

Ron is bored; Ron has finished his chocolate pud taken from the aforementioned closed-up Lidl and decides to think about whether he can convince Malfoy to come over for film night at his family’s place. Harry and Hermione, that is. 

Sometimes, Ron genuinely think Malfoy doesn’t know love. He does a good approximation at being human, but Malfoy has always been a bit wrongfooted around love. Displays of affection, casual kisses, flowers sent to the office the other side of their bland wall.

He could show him what love is. 

(Not in that way, of course.)

((Of course.))

He thinks of Malfoy, who has always been profoundly useless. This, Ron can deal with - he meets enough useless people to know how best to handle them. What he cannot deal with is that Malfoy has been raised with his uselessness as a point of pride. 

However, Malfoy has a higher prerogative, and that’s being supremely irritating at all times. Part of his duty to be a sheer pain in the arse is to defy all expectations, and thus he actually tries at his job. Maybe also to outdo Ron in their partnership, too. He can’t quite tell.

But their partnership is just that - a partnership. Time-worn with the married years, but Ron still watches him and his melodrama as usual, and pause. He’d go back to work, thoughts full of Malfoy’s fingers, and curse Circe for whomever decided that this partnership was a good thing, then think of the alternative and shut up.

*

There are no tales of derring-do in the Auror office. Ron does not have to worry about Malfoy, bleeding out on the wind-sharp streets; Malfoy does not have to think about tears seeping into Ron’s funeral robes.

‘Going to kiss you?’ It’s a statement and a question all at once, Ron undiluted.

‘Yes,’ Malfoy said, wild-eyed. ‘And shut up.’


End file.
